The Henry Harold Harrison Family

The Museum of Wigan Life (formerly the History Shop) on Library Street in Wigan, operated by the Wigan Leisure & Culture Trust, contains a reference library housing an invaluable collection of historical and genealogical material including census and BMD records, parish registers for many of the local churches, newspaper archives, old Wigan directories, and ordinance survey maps to name a few.

Wigan Town Hall, also located on Library Street in Wigan across from the History Shop, has a library of local birth, marriage and death indexes available for consultation and can provide certified copies of civil registration certificates (hand copied) while you wait.

The Family Records Centre at 1 Myddelton Street in London had a complete set of BMD indexes and census records for England. Civil registration certificates could be ordered on site for delivery by post. The FRC information has become available online, and the Myddelton Street location closed in 2008.

The Harris Library in Market Place, Preston houses a collection of genealogical research material. In particular it has parish registers (on microfilm and microfiche) for a number of our ancestral parishes that are located to the north of Wigan (from Chorley north) and are not available at the Wigan History Shop. Some of the records for family members from the Barton-Garstang area north of Preston can also be found here.

For a fee this commercial website provides access to UK birth, marriage and death indexes from 1837 to 2005, some of which are searchable. It also contains census records for England, Scotland and Wales from 1841 to 1901 (the census is taken every ten years and made public 100 years later). The site also has phone books, parish and probate records, and other resources.

This is another commercial website with records similar to those at ancestry.co.uk.

The General Register Office (GRO) provides copies of birth, marriage, and death certificates for England and Wales dating back to 1837. To order a certificate you need the GRO index information that locates the certificate. The index information can be found in the BMD indexes and ancestry.co.uk or findmypast.com. Certificates can be ordered through an online service, by telephone or post.

Online Parish Clerks website contains the transcribed parish records for many churches in Lancashire. It is an excellent source for baptismal, marriage, and burial records where the ancestor’s parish is known and the records for that parish have been transcribed. The records for each parish can be searched.

The Lancashire Parish Register Society has transcribed and publishes parish registers. It is also an excellent source for baptismal, marriage and burial records where the ancestor’s parish is known and the records for that parish are published. Records for many parishes are accessible online. The registers are also available as books or CDs.

Genuki is a remarkable online database of general historical and genealogical information for the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Familysearch.org, a part of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, has probably the largest single searchable database anywhere of baptismal, marriage and burial information. It is particularly useful for tracing records of ancestors who lived before 1837 (when civil registration first became mandatory in England) whose parish is unknown or whose parish records have not been published.

Anything you want to know about Wigan you can find online at wiganworld.co.uk. But if you are interested in historical or genealogical information, click on “Stuff.” There you can find a wide range of information about Wigan’s past. Of particular use to our research has been the searchable Wigan Cemetery Index and the old Wigan Directories.

Here the Lancashire County Council has published old ordinance survey maps of Lancashire, of which the most useful dates to circa 1850.

No list of genealogical research resources is complete without it.

John has generously shared some of his incredible family photographs, including this group photo taken around 1900 of Joseph Harrison (born 1835) and a number of his children and grandchildren.